Saturday, January 25, 2014

It’s been a good week’s viewing for fans of Wessex history.On Monday the BBC ran a repeat of Michael
Wood’s portrait of Alfred the Great, warming up for Neil Oliver on Tuesday, who
wove a documentary about the king’s bones and their present
whereabouts.If it was supposed to be an
exclusive, it didn’t work.The press ran
the story over the weekend, so it was no longer a surprise to learn that a
single surviving bone excavated at Winchester’s
Hyde Abbey is either Alfred’s or his son’s.At most one bone of William the Bastard is thought to survive, in Caen, so it’s
disappointing to think that Alfred has only a 50:50 chance of matching that.

There’s a slight possibility that other, scattered bones still lie
beneath the site of Hyde Abbey but who will fund another excavation?Wintonians down the centuries have had
something of a love-hate relationship with their heritage, as the mixed
fortunes of Hyde demonstrate.

From time to time, the city inspires a generation to really care about
its past, present and future, and then slips back into its philistine
ways.We received news this month that
the local civic society, the Winchester Residents’ Association, has wound up
after 40 years.Two of its stalwarts, Chris
Webb and the late Alan Weeks, will be familiar to WR members as defenders not
only of the city’s identity but of that of the wider Wessex region.We can see in the demise of the Residents’
Association a metaphor for what is happening right across Wessex as a
caring generation finds that there is no-one else to whom it can hand on the
torch.Thatcherism has bred a fractured
and dis-spirited nation, of utilitarians contemptuous of the joy of learning
and of cynics unable to believe that voting or campaigning can prevail against
them.

An obituary for Alan Weeks in the Hampshire
Chronicle in 2010 commented that his indefatigable campaigning had been based
on a strong sense of right and wrong: “He had a very simple view that people in Winchester must understand how important Winchester is.He could not understand people who didn’t.”

There is no doubt that Winchester
is special.Nor is there any doubt that
the threats to what makes it special have come thick and fast – motorways, urban
sprawl, central area redevelopment – and while campaigners can point to some
marvellous victories there have also been crushing defeats.The water meadows at St Cross were saved from
the road builders but Twyford Down was not.It stands as a scar upon the Wessex landscape that will easily outlive
humanity.Housebuilders have deep
pockets, deep enough to hire the best lawyers to take on even the London regime and
over-turn its decisions if they go the ‘wrong’ way.Barton Farm, so long the subject of citizens’
protests, is set to become a carpet of yuppy-box homes for those hurrying for
the early train and another day doing despicable things in the City.(Why do Londoners want to live in Wessex towns
and cities?Is it for any other reason
than that they’ve made such an almighty mess of their own?)

If concerned residents no longer gather in their associations to express
their faith in democracy, is it because local politicians have at last got the
message and mended their ways?Have the
associations rendered themselves unnecessary?Absolutely not.Most historic
cities of Winchester’s scale and vulnerability –
Bath, Cambridge, Durham, Oxford, York – are protected (at
least in theory) by Green Belt.Not Winchester.Residents still fear that the green backdrop
to the city will disappear beneath housing within their lifetimes.The city and county councils have their
orders from London
to build, build, build and the carrots and sticks are such that the orders must
be obeyed.Local opinion is to be fobbed
off, not followed.

Local politics is the usual Tory/LibDem contest that is no real contest
at all.(The two parties are evenly
matched on the current city council.)Labour won the Parliamentary seat once, in 1945, to universal surprise
(though having Eastleigh’s industrial workers helped in those days), losing it
again five years later.Wintonians have
had three opportunities to elect a Wessex Regionalist MP and taken none.Decades of conditioning have persuaded many
that they are part of a London-leaning ‘South East’ rather than of Wessex.Occasionally, conversations will start up in
the city’s pubs about how Wessex could do with Home Rule.Great idea.Who’s going to organise it?Oh,
someone else.Someone less busy.

And in the absence of Home Rule, Winchester is slowly ground away, made
uniform with every other dormitory town within reasonable distance of London Waterloo.Its fields are replaced by houses; its
historic buildings are replaced by flats; its identity, instead of being
cherished, is subverted for profit.

Winchester’s bus station, a city landmark for generations, is due to
close to make way for the retail-led Silver Hill redevelopment.The developers promised a replacement.Now the economics suggests that it will be
deleted from the scheme in order to preserve the latter’s viability.We can see in Salisbury how that works.Salisbury’s bus station closed this month,
the buses were evicted and passengers now queue at bus shelters set up in the
mediæval streets.On pavements too
narrow for the flow of pedestrians to pass comfortably behind them.

The fate of the bus stations is a sign of the times.Privatisation of profits, including those
from redevelopment.Socialisation of
losses, and of the expense involved in providing somewhere for the buses to park.Andover and Bournemouth are determined to build
new bus stations.Clearly, there are
still some who care, but how to motivate the rest?

The decline of collective responsibility happens because we accept a
model of economics and politics that decrees that the community doesn’t
matter.That there is no such thing as
society.That government must help
everyone to achieve their ambitions for their own lives, not those of
others.That government, be it in the
form of bigger unitary councils, elected mayors, or straightforward regulatory
capture through ‘partnerships’, exists to oil the wheels of commerce and
certainly not to provide the context for civic virtue.It’s tragic that Salisbury, Winchester and so
many other places in Wessex are being ruined, often irreparably, but by our
inaction we signal that it’s our choice.And who in our individualistic, inward-looking world will dare argue against that?

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

“The substance of the eminent Socialist
gentleman's speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that
the real sin is taking a loss.” Sir Winston Churchill

What if the ‘real sin’ is neither, but to
engage in a particular economic activity in the first place? Is it a sin
to leave the rainforest alone, or is it ecocide to destroy it?

Conventional economics is not neutral
about the desirability of economic activity. It places no limit to the
extent of the economy. Nor does conventional politics. The
centuries-old battle of ideas between laissez-faire and State intervention is
over which can achieve the most growth in the shortest time at the lowest cost.

Is growth necessary? If growth is
zero, the same quantity of goods and services is constantly being brought into
being, so provided the workforce to produce them and the population to consume
them also remain constant, no-one is any worse off than before. The lack
of growth causes panic only because so many decisions are based on the idea
that growth will continue, and so it must continue. In this game, the only
options for those in control of the economic process are to increase their
income through attacking the environment (growth) or through attacking society
(austerity). Just stopping the treadmill is unthinkable.

In reality, the model has to be modified
in a number of ways. Population is not constant: even within a constant
total there will be ongoing changes in the age structure that affect the size
of the working population. Natural resource costs are not constant
either: as the energy cost of accessing resources increases, so does the
overall cost even of maintaining a constant output of goods and services.
The implications are that we ought to be debating what kind of society we wish
to see in the future, and within what limits, rather than blindly following the
assumption that we can have more of everything yet lose nothing important in
the process.

Public policy, which is well-placed to
uphold the holistic view that the economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the
environment and not the other way round, is increasingly not up to the job of
framing that rounded debate. The problem of regulatory capture
is becoming acute, with even the most environmental of national agencies, such
as English Heritage and Natural England, now seeing their remits redefined to
support development at pretty much any cost. Massive damage is happening,
but we are assured either that we are wrong to perceive it as negative at all
or that the benefits outweigh the harm. Either way, it is our values and
priorities that are attacked as the ‘problem’, not the damage that is being
done to them.

There is no clear mandate from the
electorate for governments to implement a totalitarian liberal agenda – one
that marginalises any view that there is more to life than consumption – yet
that agenda is being rolled out anyway. The idea that the State should
promote pro-growth policies is an old one, but one previously balanced by
others. One traditional conception of the State is as neutral adjudicator
between competing interests. It is a role that cannot be fulfilled if the
State has repeatedly thrown in its lot with one side.

Libertarians may point out the extent to
which fiscal considerations compel the State to back the ‘wealth creators’, to
the detriment of others, in order to go on funding its spending
commitments. It is certainly worth asking if the UK is living beyond its means precisely because
it is the UK.
Radical decentralisation – and even independence in some areas – could cut the
cost of government substantially by reducing distances between the
decision-makers and their decisions, as well as by curbing unproductive
military expenditure. (Libertarians in fact tend to be quite protective
of the coercive forces of the State: they’ll happily pay for the security of
others’ persons and property, just not their education or healthcare.)
But radical decentralisation also risks empowering those with a democratic,
anti-growth agenda, potentially placing barriers in the path of universal growth, and so
has many enemies.

Research suggests that large industries
are very good at capturing large governments and then using them in ways that
are detrimental to local areas that lack the constitutional power to
resist. The much more robust response to the financial crisis in Iceland as compared with that in the UK – or the EU
generally – illustrates the point. The reverse may also be true – that
small governments are vulnerable to capture by small industries concentrated in
small areas. The domination of local councils in seaside resorts by
hoteliers and restaurateurs is a familiar theme in Wessex. There seems much less
reason, however, to suggest that this isn’t what local voters want. A
balance seems most likely to be achieved where there is a diversity of
industries, in terms of both range and scale, such as might be expected at the
regional level or in areas not dominated by one sector that is a major source
of public revenue.

Other means of limiting regulatory capture
include appointing staff with a public or voluntary sector background in
preference to those with a business background. The whole ‘revolving
door’ culture which has been assiduously cultivated over the past 35 years has
been fatal to perceptions of integrity but is the inevitable consequence of
disregarding the need for government to remain neutral when dealing with
commercial interests. ‘Experience of the real world’ isn’t helpful if all
that is learnt is the fine art of corruption. How are politicians to rely
on impartial advice that is potentially tainted, by past connections or future
prospects? The rebuilding of integrity in public administration is as
important as devolution itself in creating the kind of Wessex we wish
to see. Why not have more of a ‘them’ and ‘us’ relationship between
business and government? It’s a whole lot healthier, because it isn’t the
job of government to help the private sector. It’s the job of government
to govern.

One other side-effect of the revolving
door culture has been the corruption of the language, so that the democratic
sector now sees itself as serving ‘customers’ (rather than
patients, students, arrestees and so on). The implication is that all
relationships can be, and ought to be, reduced to cash, which in turn reinforces
the idea that life is economics and economics alone. The democratic
sector needs to be different in its whole outlook from the commercial sector,
precisely because its difference is its justification. Making things
‘more businesslike’ can be a catchy way of saying that there should be a
constant search for efficiency but take the analogy too far and the
organisation ends up totally efficient but totally ineffective.

Last month, the Leader of Blaby District
Council, in Mercia,
took the astonishing step of describing himself as naïve in believing his party’s policy on localism, as it
had been expressed in opposition. Yet he’s still a member of that
party. To overthrow the tyranny of growth before it wipes out every
decent human value requires a whole range of actions. Mass resignations
from the London
parties, of course. But also the replacement of political structures that
privilege the least attractive economic interests with new structures that
place decision-making beyond their grasp. That revolution starts in the
mind, with a simple substitution of loyalty to Wessex
for a worn-out loyalty to London
that has been comprehensively betrayed.